To Weave the Web
by lielabell
Summary: This was written for the August Moon's Surrender Challenge presented by the one and only Clanmalfoy: write a fic centered around the development of one or more of the young wizards that are Harry's contemporaries, and the decisions they may be called up


How do you tell someone how thinks you are their dearest friend that the feeling is not mutual? I have been trying to think of a polite way for years now. Every time I look at her I want to tear at my hair and scream the truth out for all the world to hear. Instead I smile blandly while she prattles on about some boy or another and try to keep from letting my emotions show.

I know it is beyond foolish to keep this charade up but I cannot help myself. I was once the friend she thinks me to be, more than willing to take an active role in her life as such, never once questioning what my wants and needs might be. But that is no longer the case.

I don't know what changed or when it happened, but somewhere along the way my feelings for her morphed into something I cannot stand. Her tinkling laugh grates on my nerves and her silly moods make me want to say something unpardonably cutting. It is only the memory of the friendship we once shared that keeps my tongue in line.

Sometimes I think I hate her.

Her perfect figure and stunning white smile make my belly knot and my own yellowed teeth clench. When I see her standing oh so near one of the sycophants who follow her about like lap dogs I find my hands curled into fists.

I am not as skilled at maintaining my mask as I would like. Others around me have noticed; their eyes gleam with speculation whenever the two of us are near. I know it is only a matter of time before someone works up the courage to tell her what I cannot.

I am caught in a web of my own making. Every day my glib lies and half truths wrap a little tighter around my neck. I will admit that there are nights when I lie awake and wonder what it would be like to end my torment and give voice to the words I long to say.

There is no easy way to tell someone it is over.

There is no kind way to crush someone's dreams.

If I give in to my fondest desires I will be doing both. And I love the memory of what we were too much to do so.

}}

I feel like I am cheating on her.

Why? Because she saw me laughing with another girl. She smiled at the two of us and raised a hand in acknowledgement before turning and leaving the library. I tried to engage Emma in conversation after she left but the mood had changed. Em kept giving me odd little looks and I could not keep the fear I felt from my eyes.

I tried to audition others for her role but none of them could fill the space her friendship use to live in. Teens are known world over for their drama but even so I think I am pushing it too far. I just need to tell her.

But when I open my mouth nothing but the vapid pleasantries I know she hates come out.

}}

I wrote it all out in a letter last night.

I put in writing the whole sordid affair. I ended it with a noble sounding line about how I would not in good faith continue our relationship. It was so bloodless, so cut and dry. I sealed the bloody thing and even went so far as to address it before my guilt kicked in and I tossed it in the common room fire.

Then I went in search of her. When I found her she kissed my cheek and told me how her day had been. She was curled up in a chair with an apple in one hand and a good book in the other. She smiled at me with loving eyes and I had this overwhelming urge to throw up.

When she headed up for bed I forced myself to do the same.

Why did things have to change? Why couldn't I have stayed content in her shadow? All these years I have taken such pleasure in being her friend, her closest confidant. What was so wrong with that?

}}

I told Luna tonight.

She smiled with her knowing eyes and gave me a verbal pat on the head. Little Looney Lovegood has suddenly turned into a sage. When did that happen?

}}

If life was fair the events of tonight never would have taken place.

I was standing in my place by her side when he walked up to her. Him, the boy that I have loved to hate for nigh on six years. And what did she do? She took his outstretched hand and walked with him in the gardens around the lake while I sat on a hill and seethed.

I heard her laugh, a sound so pure and clear it makes you want to cry, echoing across the lake slightly before dusk and knew that I could not take another moment of this pseudo-friendship.

When she came back to where I was I gave him an evil glare, nothing out of the ordinary about that, and then made a nasty comment about the way the wind had blow her hair about. It had not a bit of truth to it, somehow she always manages to look fetching, but her face fell and his breath was sucked in so fast you could hear it.

I smirked at her in a way I had never done before and quickly walked away.

When I reached my rooms I let all the anger and frustration pour out of me. She came up moments later and scratched at my door. I tried to growl something at her, honestly I did, but the web I have woven caught me once more in its grip and I invited her in for a cuppa instead.

She said she was sorry about leaving me alone in the wet grass for so long. She said that she understood why I acted the way I did. She told me she would never put something as silly as a walk in the woods before our friendship again. She begged me to forgive her.

_Me _to forgive _her_.

Can you believe it?

}}

Things have changed yet again.

I did what I should have done long ago. No, I did not tell her. I did something better. Yours truly is now a member of the dating elite. That's right, I snagged someone.

And what happened you ask?

She started distancing herself. She said she did not want to interfere in our relationship, she didn't want my chosen one to feel left out or neglected so she has backed as far out of our friendship as she possibly can.

It is everything I wanted; everything I hoped would come true. Best of all I did nothing that any normally functioning teen would not have. Sure it means that I have to put up with someone holding my hand and the occasional mind numbing snog, but it is worth it.

}}

Tomorrow is my sixteenth birthday.

I am having a party and she won't be there. Why? Because she has not been to my house once since the end of term and did not RSPV to the invite my Mother sent without a second thought.

This will be my first party since I was three that she has not attended. Will the world stop turning? Will dark magic suddenly become good? Will the sun fall out of the sky and the waters in the ocean turn to dust?

Somehow I think not.

This is what I wanted. I have told myself that endlessly since she snubbed me on the train ride home. This is what I wanted. I have my freedom. I am no longer the tag along best friend that I once was. People look at me now. They see me for who I am not who I am with.

Still something is missing.

}}

Potions just isn't the same without her sitting by my side. Neither is Ancient Runes, or Charms, or any of the other classes I have this term. She is in them all. There she sits, with her smile and her ink black hair, rubbing shoulders with her new best friend. Sharing secret laughs with her and raising her eyebrow whenever she catches me looking her way.

I ache with the loss of what we had.

But then I think back to what torture it was to be her inner circle and I know what I did was right.

}}

I heard from the boys that she misses me.

They threw that tidbit my way in hopes of getting me to let them crib off my homework. I just sneered at them and told them to mind their own business. They gaffed and made a ruckus but left soon enough once I made it clear that my stance would not be changing.

}}

When you realize something about yourself that you don't like you do all sorts of foolish things. You push away the closest thing you have ever had to a best friend. You run through members of the opposite sex like they were water. You kiss and tell, you play nasty pranks and you hurt the ones who love you most. I am guiltily of all the crimes on this list and more.

My greatest sin is not telling her the truth.

She sends me these longing looks every now and then. She leans her face against her hand with haunted eyes and she gazes in my direction. I hear from the gossipmongers that she feels terrible about how things ended between us. She blames herself. Says she was jealous of my dating and hated to have to share me with another. She says she earned whatever heartache she has by being so selfish.

She has no idea.

I am safe in my little world, cocooned from all that is her by layers of new friends and acquaintances. I am popular in ways I never could have dreamed. A place in my inner circle is in high demand and girls come flocking to my side to bask in what ever light I can shine on them.

But none of them is her.

}}

What I wouldn't give to have unrestricted access to a time turner. What I wouldn't do to go back to my then self and tell me how simple it is to tell the truth instead of lies.

}}

I saw her crying in the halls last night.

I was walking back from dinner when I stumbled across her at the foot of the stairs. Her hair was a mess and her face was all blotchy but my eyes have never seen a more welcome sight.

She started to mumble an apology before she knew who I was. I saw the second my face registered in her eyes. Her whole being lit up and she gave me that old familiar smile. Without thinking I returned it. I put my hand on her arm and helped her up.

She stood there facing me for what seemed like an eternity. I was just about to push past her when she put a restraining hand on my sleeve and looked up at me with those endless eyes. In the next second all thought fled my mind as I wrapped her in my arms and did what I have been wanting to since second year when I finally noticed she was a girl.

That's right, I kissed her.

No regrets. Not a one. Not over the way her mouth went soft and pliant under mine. Not about the low moan the came from her when I pulled away. Not due to the confusion and disbelief she couldn't hide when I looked in her eyes, nor for the unshed tears I saw in them as well. And defiantly not for the panicked way she ran from me.

No regrets. Not a one.

}}

If my last name was Weasley I would be too blind to care about what happened between us. If it were Malfoy I would snub her all the more and sneer at her if she tried to make amends. If I was the famous Potter I would go about looking befuddled and blink like an owl whenever she walked into the room. If I was a Longbottom I would trip over my own two feet when she touched my arm and if my name was Smith I could have come up with a smooth rejoinder when she asked me meet her after dinner for a long walk.

But my sir name is Zabini so I did none of those things.

Instead I brushed an errant stand of her hair back behind her ears. She smiled shyly up at me for a moment before pressing her trembling lips to mine then she pulled back and quirked her lips in that way that only Millie can. She whispered that everything would be alright and I believed her.

Maybe being a teenager's not so bad.


End file.
